Loving Ransom Notes : Found Inspiration

I don’t claim to be a great artist. Sometimes, my skills are pretty appalling. I imagine lots of you suffer the same fate? But I don’t let that stop me. Stop me from getting creative, that is. All I do is get a little more creative with what’s around me.

Last week was a pretty big week, and to be frank, there wasn’t much left at the end of the week in terms of arty juiciness. I had some prompts tucked up my sleeve, but I simply wasn’t able to execute most of them in my depleted state.

So here’s what I did. I sat down with my wee basket of found images and words, and proceeded to demolish a freebie magazine I’d picked up at the supermarket for this express purpose (you will never look at junk mail the same way again) and cut out all the words and phrases that leapt out at me. The really fun part was in assembling them into loving ransom notes:

A few of them really stood out, and later on that evening, I was inspired enough that one of them even made it into an actual journal page in my altered book, in response to a sob-inducing letter my gorgeous hubster had sent me earlier that day:

That image is quite heavily edited on a couple of iPhone apps (MagicHour and Instagram) and I did more work on the page the following morning. It was one of those ones that doesn’t look the prettiest – it was messy -but meant a whole heap.

Here’s the thing about creative journaling – it isn’t about being an artist. It isn’t about producing art that you want to sell. It’s about telling the story of, and finding inspiration from, your everyday life.

Sometimes that inspiration can be found in the unlikeliest of places. And if you can use it as part of a simple creative exercise, then sometimes, perhaps – and most often – you’ll find yourself inspired to take the next step.